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Police in a number of U.S. cities aren’t just tasering and tear-gassing protesters, they’re attacking their sense of hearing. The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), also called a “sound canon,” is a powerful, military-grade electronic megaphone that, in addition to broadcasting police commands, can be used to disperse crowds with a chirping noise reaching 162 decibels, 42 decibels above the level that can cause immediate and permanent hearing damage.

The NLG International Committee’s Palestine Subcommittee has submitted a report to the ICC prosecutor with facts showing that Israeli air and ground attacks on Palestinian territory preceded Hamas and non-Hamas rocket fire, and thus could not have been in self-defense; in fact, these attacks actually sparked a vast increase in rocket fire.

Standing in front of the Fall River Justice Center, in a group of about a dozen protesters who held signs and made impassioned pleas to reform a criminal justice system they said discriminates against people of color, Everett Hoagland told the gathering he'd like to go “old-school.” By that he meant leading an improvised protest chant.

“I went down to the demonstration to get my fair share of abuse,” sang the Rolling Stones.

They could have been singing about New York during the Republican National Convention in 2004, when police used mass arrests against anti-war protesters who thronged the streets of Manhattan. More than 1,800 protesters, bystanders and journalists, including this writer, were jailed during the late-summer convention. I was arrested while doing my job of documenting a peaceful protest with pen and camera.

Since Jan. 16, when Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine, Israel has forced the resignation of the head of the United Nations inquiry into Operation Protective Edge and called on members of the tribunal to cut funding to the court. “So long as any institution for the prosecution of war crimes exists, the Israeli state knows that under any system of justice it’s their leaders and officials that are going to be facing prosecution for their ongoing and systematic war crimes against the Palestinian people,” said Charlotte Kates, the coordinator for the National Lawyers Guild International Committee.